Monday, March 11, 2013 9:04:54 AM
Tohoku has been truly rent asunder for untold generations yet to be born
by Roger Pulvers
Special To The Japan Times
Mar 10, 2013
There are now three Tohokus … and there have been since the afternoon of March 11, 2011.
One part of that region of northeastern Honshu comprises districts not directly affected by that day’s Great East Japan Earthquake or the huge tsunami it triggered. A second is the coastal areas that were inundated or destroyed. The third is the towns and villages in Fukushima Prefecture affected by radioactive contamination from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Despite these demarcations, however, the entire Tohoku region and, in a sense, all Japan has been contaminated by radioactivity or the fear of contamination now and in the future.
I have just returned from a visit to the lovely seaport town of Miyako in Iwate Prefecture, which I first visited in 1970. Whenever I’ve been to the disaster zone in the past two years, the first thing I always seem to notice is the birds. This time I saw buzzards and hawks, white herons and crows … and what looked like a family of swans in an empty lot, likely having come down from Siberia to overwinter in Japan.
Empty nests were all about, some in trees and others under the eaves of abandoned buildings. The birds seem oblivious to the calamity that changed the lives of all animals on the ground after March 11, 2011.
Miyako has incorporated several villages into its city limits, giving it a population of almost 60,000. One of those villages is Taro, a location hit particularly hard by the tsunami. Taro had built two 10-meter-high sea walls, completing them in 1958 and reinforcing them in 1966. But at Taro the tsunami reached 12 meters in height. It struck land there at 3:25 p.m., about 40 minutes after the earthquake. People there say that they put too much store in their sea walls, and that caused many to delay their escape. Two hundred people, nearly 5 percent of Taro’s population, perished in the tsunami.
The walled embankments at Miyako were similarly useless. The frequently shown scene of black water flowing over an embankment was shot at Miyako.
Today, large sections of the city are a wasteland. Enormous piles of rubbish have been collected at the wharf and at the baseball stadium. The train line has been shut down, and I was told it is not to be reopened. Traveling by road is now the only way to and from this part of the once famously scenic Sanriku Coast.
But the thing that distinguishes this district of Tohoku from those contaminated by radioactivity is the heroic attempt to bring life back to normal.
I visited the Akamae Kindergarten. It was opened in 1948 and is still owned and operated by the Koseki family that set it up. The building is bright and new; and the children run around and jump about with screams of joy. They performed a play and recited Kenji Miyazawa’s poem, “Strong in the Rain.” And the teachers, all holding a flower, sang the NHK recovery song, “Flowers Will Bloom,” the lyrics of which I have translated.
Later I went to the home of a couple with five children aged 8 and under. My wife and I brought up four children with a 6-year span in age … but five! The home was tiny, and yet the children read picture books with their mother and felt the love coming from her and the entire community. As the lyrics of “Flowers Will Bloom” go: “Flowers will bloom … for you who are yet to be born.”
Contrast this with the situation in the contaminated zones. Rather than tell you of my experiences there, I will turn to biologist Timothy Mousseau, who, together with colleague Anders Moller, published data online last month on “The Effects of Low-dose Radiation [ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2013.00630.x/abstract ; http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/sign/2013/00000010/00000001/art00004 ].” Mousseau and Moller have been visiting Chernobyl for more than two decades, as well as spending much time in Fukushima since March 2011.
“Radiation is everywhere, but it cannot be seen, smelt or felt,” they write. But in the affected zones, the visitor notices “gnarly distortions of tree growth and numerous abnormalities in insects, birds and other animals. These are caused by genetic mutations induced by exposure to the radiation.”
The two biologists assert that there has been “a suppression of information on Chernobyl and Fukushima by governments and government agencies in countries as diverse as the Soviet Union, France and Japan.”
As for Japan, they note, “nowhere else than in the nuclear industry are scientists so partial with respect to research questions regarding public health or ecological effects of low-dose radiation.” They go on, in their online study, to compare nuclear scientists in Japan with medical doctors employed by the tobacco industry in the 1950s.
Recently, the World Health Organisation has claimed that the effects on health of radiation from the Fukushima accident are not significant. But the study by Mousseau and Moller puts these claims into a clear perspective. A human generation is of the order of 30 years; so studies, even of the effects of the Chernobyl disaster, are essentially still in the first generation.
“We may only be seeing the first stage of the negative consequences,” they write. “The next accident may expose as many as 30 million people to radioactive contamination. … Birds, rodents and insects (near Chernobyl) are now in their 25th or greater generation (and) the negative effects of low-dose radiation from Chernobyl documented for these organisms are much worse than what is reported for humans.”
When I read these findings, I cannot forget the radiant faces of the children of Akamae Kindergarten or the keen glare in the eyes of the little children listening to their mother read them stories. The people of Miyako have suffered unthinkable loss and hardship since the day two years ago that changed their lives and the lives of everyone in Japan. But at least they can embrace the hope that “flowers will bloom … for you who are yet to be born.”
The people who made their livelihoods in the contaminated regions of Tohoku, however, have no hope of return. They were abducted by a government and an energy industry that deceived them and continue to deceive them.
The very fact that the present government of Japan, under the leadership of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is intent on reconstituting the nuclear power industry is not only an insult to those victims of radioactive contamination in Fukushima Prefecture, but an attack of monumental proportions on all people living in this country.
Mr. Abe, you say that you wish for a “strong Japan.” But the same strong arm that purports to defend the country is the one that will crush it and divest its inhabitants of all hope.
Not all enemies come from the outside. A nuclearized Japan is the greatest terror facing the people of this country. If this terror persists, then the only flowers that will bloom will be those on the graves of children living now and in generations to come.
Copyright 2013 The Japan Times LTD.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2013/03/10/commentary/tohoku-has-been-truly-rent-asunder-for-untold-generations-yet-to-be-born/ [with comment]
===
Japan quake 'heard at edge of space'
Monday marks the second anniversary of the quake and tsunami that claimed more than 15,000 lives
Goce flies lower than any other scientific satellite
Goce's principal objective is to make maps of the variation in the pull of gravity across the Earth
The Chelyabinsk meteor is known to have produced a big infrasound signal - but is it in Goce's data?
The great Tohoku earthquake in Japan two years ago was so big its effects were even felt at the edge of space.
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
10 March 2013 Last updated at 07:20 ET
Scientists say the Magnitude 9.0 tremor on 11 March 2011 sent a ripple of sound through the atmosphere that was picked up by the Goce satellite.
Its super-sensitive instrumentation was able to detect the disturbance as it passed through the thin wisps of air still present 255km above the Earth.
The observation is reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters [ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50205/abstract ].
It has long been recognised that major quakes will generate very low-frequency acoustic waves, or infrasound - a type of deep rumble at frequencies below those discernible to the human ear. But no spacecraft in orbit has had the capability to record them, until now.
"We've looked for this signal before with other satellites and haven't seen it, and I think that's because you need an incredibly fine instrument," said Dr Rune Floberghagen from the European Space Agency (Esa).
"Goce's accelerometers are about a hundred times more sensitive than any previous instrumentation and we detected the acoustic wave not once, but twice - passing through it over the Pacific and over Europe," the mission manager told BBC News.
Goce's prime purpose is to map very subtle differences in the pull of gravity across the surface of the Earth caused by the uneven distribution of mass within the planet.
These variations produce almost imperceptible changes in the velocity of the satellite as it flies overhead and which it records with those high-precision accelerometers.
This gravity signal is very weak, however, and that means Goce must fly incredibly low to sense it - so low, in fact, that it actually drags through the top of the atmosphere.
It is these special circumstances that put the satellite in a position to detect the infrasonic disturbance on 11 March 2011.
The acoustic waves perturbed the density of air molecules and changed their speed. It was the faintest of winds at an altitude of 255km, but strong enough to be registered by Goce.
The Esa spacecraft encountered the signal as it passed over the Pacific some 30 minutes after the onset of the M9.0 event, and then again 25 minutes later as it moved across Europe.
Because of the way the accelerometers are arranged in Goce, it was possible to reconstruct the detection in three dimensions and so confidently trace the infrasound back to its source - the earthquake.
"If you have a small ripple in density, it would be hard to conclude beyond any reasonable doubt that this was due to the earthquake," explained Dr Floberghagen. "But the fact that we have a very significant density perturbation, with the shape predicted by all the acoustic models, and the fact that we picked it up again on the other side of the Earth where you would expect to find it - that's perfect."
Scientists can already study earthquakes from space, in particular through the use of radar to map the deformation of the ground that results when faults rupture. But it remains to be seen how useful an acoustic sensor placed in a low-Earth orbit might be.
Tohoku was an exceptional event and this may explain why Goce, on this occasion, was able to pick it up.
Buoyed by their success, however, scientists on the mission are checking through the satellite's data to see if an infrasonic signal was also recorded when an asteroid entered the atmosphere over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk last month. The entry's infrasound signature was certainly evident to listening stations on the ground.
"Ever since we've flown this type of instrument - accelerometers - in space, people have been looking for the acoustic beat from earthquakes, because that could be used to understand the way tremors propagate not only through the Earth but through the Earth environment.
"We'll see; time will tell. But just the idea of an acoustic sensor in space is pretty cool," Dr Floberghagen told BBC News.
Goce itself is running low on fuel and is nearing the end of its mission.
Esa will lower its orbit in June to below 230km to try to obtain even finer detail on Earth's gravity field. The agency is then expected to command the satellite to come out of the sky and fall back to Earth in November.
*
Infrasound - the deep rumble
Humans will hear typically in the range from 20 to 20,000 Hertz (cycles per second)
The acoustic waves of infrasound are detected at much lower frequencies
These waves will produce tiny, but measurable, changes in atmospheric pressure
Infrasound is associated with volcanoes, earthquakes, meteors, and storms
There is evidence that whales and elephants communicate with infrasound
*
Related StoriesGravity mapper surfs atmosphere 19 NOVEMBER 2012, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20349204
Sea sediments tell of past quakes 27 APRIL 2012, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17843646
What chance of a 'big one' in Tokyo? 21 MARCH 2011, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12792943
Gravity data traces Moho boundary 12 MARCH 2012, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17312368
'Potato Earth' shows us gravity 31 MARCH 2011, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12911806
Mission traces ocean circulation 20 DECEMBER 2010, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11867162
Science in search of the low rumble 09 OCTOBER 2002, SCI/TECH
http://www.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2309505.stm
*
Related Internet links
Earth Explorers (Esa)
http://www.esa.int/esaLP/ASEWGWNW9SC_LPearthexp_0.html
Goce (Esa)
http://www.esa.int/goce
*
BBC © 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21730887
--
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===
Japan Earthquake, 2 Years Later: Before and After
The tsunami-devastated Kesennuma in Miyagi prefecture, is pictured in this side-by-side comparison photo taken March 12, 2011 (left) and March 4, 2013 (right), ahead of the two-year anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that damaged so much of northeastern Japan.
Mar 7, 2013
In a few days, Japan will mark the 2nd anniversary of the devastating Tohoku earthquake and resulting tsunami. The disaster killed nearly 19,000 across Japan, leveling entire coastal villages. Now, nearly all the rubble has been removed, or stacked neatly, but reconstruction on higher ground is lagging, as government red tape has slowed recovery efforts. Locals living in temporary housing are frustrated, and still haunted by the horrific event, some displaying signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Collected below are a series of before-and-after interactive images. Click on each one to see the image fade from before (2011) to after (2013). [18 photo pairs]
[before and after photo pairs embedded]
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/03/japan-earthquake-2-years-later-before-and-after/100469/ [with comments]
by Roger Pulvers
Special To The Japan Times
Mar 10, 2013
There are now three Tohokus … and there have been since the afternoon of March 11, 2011.
One part of that region of northeastern Honshu comprises districts not directly affected by that day’s Great East Japan Earthquake or the huge tsunami it triggered. A second is the coastal areas that were inundated or destroyed. The third is the towns and villages in Fukushima Prefecture affected by radioactive contamination from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Despite these demarcations, however, the entire Tohoku region and, in a sense, all Japan has been contaminated by radioactivity or the fear of contamination now and in the future.
I have just returned from a visit to the lovely seaport town of Miyako in Iwate Prefecture, which I first visited in 1970. Whenever I’ve been to the disaster zone in the past two years, the first thing I always seem to notice is the birds. This time I saw buzzards and hawks, white herons and crows … and what looked like a family of swans in an empty lot, likely having come down from Siberia to overwinter in Japan.
Empty nests were all about, some in trees and others under the eaves of abandoned buildings. The birds seem oblivious to the calamity that changed the lives of all animals on the ground after March 11, 2011.
Miyako has incorporated several villages into its city limits, giving it a population of almost 60,000. One of those villages is Taro, a location hit particularly hard by the tsunami. Taro had built two 10-meter-high sea walls, completing them in 1958 and reinforcing them in 1966. But at Taro the tsunami reached 12 meters in height. It struck land there at 3:25 p.m., about 40 minutes after the earthquake. People there say that they put too much store in their sea walls, and that caused many to delay their escape. Two hundred people, nearly 5 percent of Taro’s population, perished in the tsunami.
The walled embankments at Miyako were similarly useless. The frequently shown scene of black water flowing over an embankment was shot at Miyako.
Today, large sections of the city are a wasteland. Enormous piles of rubbish have been collected at the wharf and at the baseball stadium. The train line has been shut down, and I was told it is not to be reopened. Traveling by road is now the only way to and from this part of the once famously scenic Sanriku Coast.
But the thing that distinguishes this district of Tohoku from those contaminated by radioactivity is the heroic attempt to bring life back to normal.
I visited the Akamae Kindergarten. It was opened in 1948 and is still owned and operated by the Koseki family that set it up. The building is bright and new; and the children run around and jump about with screams of joy. They performed a play and recited Kenji Miyazawa’s poem, “Strong in the Rain.” And the teachers, all holding a flower, sang the NHK recovery song, “Flowers Will Bloom,” the lyrics of which I have translated.
Later I went to the home of a couple with five children aged 8 and under. My wife and I brought up four children with a 6-year span in age … but five! The home was tiny, and yet the children read picture books with their mother and felt the love coming from her and the entire community. As the lyrics of “Flowers Will Bloom” go: “Flowers will bloom … for you who are yet to be born.”
Contrast this with the situation in the contaminated zones. Rather than tell you of my experiences there, I will turn to biologist Timothy Mousseau, who, together with colleague Anders Moller, published data online last month on “The Effects of Low-dose Radiation [ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2013.00630.x/abstract ; http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bpl/sign/2013/00000010/00000001/art00004 ].” Mousseau and Moller have been visiting Chernobyl for more than two decades, as well as spending much time in Fukushima since March 2011.
“Radiation is everywhere, but it cannot be seen, smelt or felt,” they write. But in the affected zones, the visitor notices “gnarly distortions of tree growth and numerous abnormalities in insects, birds and other animals. These are caused by genetic mutations induced by exposure to the radiation.”
The two biologists assert that there has been “a suppression of information on Chernobyl and Fukushima by governments and government agencies in countries as diverse as the Soviet Union, France and Japan.”
As for Japan, they note, “nowhere else than in the nuclear industry are scientists so partial with respect to research questions regarding public health or ecological effects of low-dose radiation.” They go on, in their online study, to compare nuclear scientists in Japan with medical doctors employed by the tobacco industry in the 1950s.
Recently, the World Health Organisation has claimed that the effects on health of radiation from the Fukushima accident are not significant. But the study by Mousseau and Moller puts these claims into a clear perspective. A human generation is of the order of 30 years; so studies, even of the effects of the Chernobyl disaster, are essentially still in the first generation.
“We may only be seeing the first stage of the negative consequences,” they write. “The next accident may expose as many as 30 million people to radioactive contamination. … Birds, rodents and insects (near Chernobyl) are now in their 25th or greater generation (and) the negative effects of low-dose radiation from Chernobyl documented for these organisms are much worse than what is reported for humans.”
When I read these findings, I cannot forget the radiant faces of the children of Akamae Kindergarten or the keen glare in the eyes of the little children listening to their mother read them stories. The people of Miyako have suffered unthinkable loss and hardship since the day two years ago that changed their lives and the lives of everyone in Japan. But at least they can embrace the hope that “flowers will bloom … for you who are yet to be born.”
The people who made their livelihoods in the contaminated regions of Tohoku, however, have no hope of return. They were abducted by a government and an energy industry that deceived them and continue to deceive them.
The very fact that the present government of Japan, under the leadership of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is intent on reconstituting the nuclear power industry is not only an insult to those victims of radioactive contamination in Fukushima Prefecture, but an attack of monumental proportions on all people living in this country.
Mr. Abe, you say that you wish for a “strong Japan.” But the same strong arm that purports to defend the country is the one that will crush it and divest its inhabitants of all hope.
Not all enemies come from the outside. A nuclearized Japan is the greatest terror facing the people of this country. If this terror persists, then the only flowers that will bloom will be those on the graves of children living now and in generations to come.
Copyright 2013 The Japan Times LTD.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2013/03/10/commentary/tohoku-has-been-truly-rent-asunder-for-untold-generations-yet-to-be-born/ [with comment]
===
Japan quake 'heard at edge of space'
Monday marks the second anniversary of the quake and tsunami that claimed more than 15,000 lives
Goce flies lower than any other scientific satellite
Goce's principal objective is to make maps of the variation in the pull of gravity across the Earth
The Chelyabinsk meteor is known to have produced a big infrasound signal - but is it in Goce's data?
The great Tohoku earthquake in Japan two years ago was so big its effects were even felt at the edge of space.
By Jonathan Amos
Science correspondent, BBC News
10 March 2013 Last updated at 07:20 ET
Scientists say the Magnitude 9.0 tremor on 11 March 2011 sent a ripple of sound through the atmosphere that was picked up by the Goce satellite.
Its super-sensitive instrumentation was able to detect the disturbance as it passed through the thin wisps of air still present 255km above the Earth.
The observation is reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters [ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50205/abstract ].
It has long been recognised that major quakes will generate very low-frequency acoustic waves, or infrasound - a type of deep rumble at frequencies below those discernible to the human ear. But no spacecraft in orbit has had the capability to record them, until now.
"We've looked for this signal before with other satellites and haven't seen it, and I think that's because you need an incredibly fine instrument," said Dr Rune Floberghagen from the European Space Agency (Esa).
"Goce's accelerometers are about a hundred times more sensitive than any previous instrumentation and we detected the acoustic wave not once, but twice - passing through it over the Pacific and over Europe," the mission manager told BBC News.
Goce's prime purpose is to map very subtle differences in the pull of gravity across the surface of the Earth caused by the uneven distribution of mass within the planet.
These variations produce almost imperceptible changes in the velocity of the satellite as it flies overhead and which it records with those high-precision accelerometers.
This gravity signal is very weak, however, and that means Goce must fly incredibly low to sense it - so low, in fact, that it actually drags through the top of the atmosphere.
It is these special circumstances that put the satellite in a position to detect the infrasonic disturbance on 11 March 2011.
The acoustic waves perturbed the density of air molecules and changed their speed. It was the faintest of winds at an altitude of 255km, but strong enough to be registered by Goce.
The Esa spacecraft encountered the signal as it passed over the Pacific some 30 minutes after the onset of the M9.0 event, and then again 25 minutes later as it moved across Europe.
Because of the way the accelerometers are arranged in Goce, it was possible to reconstruct the detection in three dimensions and so confidently trace the infrasound back to its source - the earthquake.
"If you have a small ripple in density, it would be hard to conclude beyond any reasonable doubt that this was due to the earthquake," explained Dr Floberghagen. "But the fact that we have a very significant density perturbation, with the shape predicted by all the acoustic models, and the fact that we picked it up again on the other side of the Earth where you would expect to find it - that's perfect."
Scientists can already study earthquakes from space, in particular through the use of radar to map the deformation of the ground that results when faults rupture. But it remains to be seen how useful an acoustic sensor placed in a low-Earth orbit might be.
Tohoku was an exceptional event and this may explain why Goce, on this occasion, was able to pick it up.
Buoyed by their success, however, scientists on the mission are checking through the satellite's data to see if an infrasonic signal was also recorded when an asteroid entered the atmosphere over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk last month. The entry's infrasound signature was certainly evident to listening stations on the ground.
"Ever since we've flown this type of instrument - accelerometers - in space, people have been looking for the acoustic beat from earthquakes, because that could be used to understand the way tremors propagate not only through the Earth but through the Earth environment.
"We'll see; time will tell. But just the idea of an acoustic sensor in space is pretty cool," Dr Floberghagen told BBC News.
Goce itself is running low on fuel and is nearing the end of its mission.
Esa will lower its orbit in June to below 230km to try to obtain even finer detail on Earth's gravity field. The agency is then expected to command the satellite to come out of the sky and fall back to Earth in November.
*
Infrasound - the deep rumble
Humans will hear typically in the range from 20 to 20,000 Hertz (cycles per second)
The acoustic waves of infrasound are detected at much lower frequencies
These waves will produce tiny, but measurable, changes in atmospheric pressure
Infrasound is associated with volcanoes, earthquakes, meteors, and storms
There is evidence that whales and elephants communicate with infrasound
*
Related StoriesGravity mapper surfs atmosphere 19 NOVEMBER 2012, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20349204
Sea sediments tell of past quakes 27 APRIL 2012, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17843646
What chance of a 'big one' in Tokyo? 21 MARCH 2011, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12792943
Gravity data traces Moho boundary 12 MARCH 2012, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17312368
'Potato Earth' shows us gravity 31 MARCH 2011, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12911806
Mission traces ocean circulation 20 DECEMBER 2010, SCIENCE & ENVIRONMENT
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11867162
Science in search of the low rumble 09 OCTOBER 2002, SCI/TECH
http://www.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2309505.stm
*
Related Internet links
Earth Explorers (Esa)
http://www.esa.int/esaLP/ASEWGWNW9SC_LPearthexp_0.html
Goce (Esa)
http://www.esa.int/goce
*
BBC © 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21730887
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http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=81840365 and preceding (and any future following
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84625273 and following
===
Japan Earthquake, 2 Years Later: Before and After
The tsunami-devastated Kesennuma in Miyagi prefecture, is pictured in this side-by-side comparison photo taken March 12, 2011 (left) and March 4, 2013 (right), ahead of the two-year anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that damaged so much of northeastern Japan.
Mar 7, 2013
In a few days, Japan will mark the 2nd anniversary of the devastating Tohoku earthquake and resulting tsunami. The disaster killed nearly 19,000 across Japan, leveling entire coastal villages. Now, nearly all the rubble has been removed, or stacked neatly, but reconstruction on higher ground is lagging, as government red tape has slowed recovery efforts. Locals living in temporary housing are frustrated, and still haunted by the horrific event, some displaying signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Collected below are a series of before-and-after interactive images. Click on each one to see the image fade from before (2011) to after (2013). [18 photo pairs]
[before and after photo pairs embedded]
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/03/japan-earthquake-2-years-later-before-and-after/100469/ [with comments]
Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
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